War and Foreign Policy

Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discuss the fallout from the first week of the Ukraine-Russian conflict.

When the Bush administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. 

By 1996, it was agreed that “Washington refused to rule out any country,” for NATO membership. Except, of course, Russia. Moreover, a NATO that included Poland was unlikely to invite Russia.

It's unlikely that Putin had no idea of the immense costs that he and Russia as a whole would incur in undertaking this war, so he likely believed the alternative would have been even more costly.

A key problem with collective security is the fact that when gangs of states wade into a conflict, they inexorably widen it.

The Ukrainian regime thinks it knows better than husbands and fathers when it comes to caring for their families. But no bureaucrat ought to be allowed to make such a decision. 

Sticking to Cold War–era assumptions is a recipe for a suboptimal foreign policy, which could increase the probability of the US stumbling into a disastrous war of choice.

The United States is not now—and has never been—in any position to lecture other countries about the moral evils of aggressive foreign policy.

The Ukraine crisis arrives in the middle of an evident slowdown of the largest economies after the placebo effect of massive stimulus plans has already worn off.

Even as the USA seeks to expand NATO while it escalates tensions with Russia, the organization is facing internal pressures as some member nations do not agree with Washington's saber-rattling agenda.